Profile: Pete Quartuccio
Man of many careers
By Ernie Neff


On the first day he could join the Navy – his 17th birthday – Pete Quartuccio began boot camp in San Diego. It was the first stop in a patchwork career that would take him over and under oceans, into crime-fighting, real estate, construction and, now, pest control.
“You know all the people who go through life having one job?” the mustachioed, 64-year-old pest control operator asks. “Geeeez!”


Quartuccio, who usually works in shorts and pullover shirt, has pursued all of his careers with fervor. He says the same traits lead to success in all businesses. “It’s how hard you want to work, what kind of chances you want to take, and how much belief you have in yourself,” he says. “I’ve always done very, very well.”
At pest control, he’s seemingly put as much passion into the industry as a whole as he has into his own business. In the decade he’s owned and run All-Service Pest Management in Port Charlotte, Quartuccio has been a zealous advocate for industry-wide education and regulatory enforcement. (See sidebar, “Management and education.”) He serves on the statewide Pest Control Enforcement Advisory Council and is the volunteer education coordinator for Certified Operators of Southwest Florida (COSWFL), a regional pest control association.
“He’s a dedicated person,” says Ray Libretto, founder and vice president of ABC Pest Control in Cape Coral. “He definitely keeps the association (COSWFL) going. He does all our training for all our technicians” as well as continuing education (CEU) training for certified operators. “He’s a strong believer in the pest control industry. It’s been good to him and he feels he owes it back to the industry ... It would be very hard to replace him.”

DEPARTING DETROIT
Quartuccio’s mother died shortly after he was born in Detroit in February 1941. “I was very, very fortunate – I was raised by my grandparents,” he says. He laughs and adds, “They were from Sicily and didn’t speak English.”
He had no desire to follow in the footsteps of his father, who worked 42 years on Chrysler loading docks in Detroit. He went only through 10th grade of what he said was “the worst high school in America” before joining the Navy.
The first boat he sailed on was a destroyer. “I got seasick and decided I didn’t like it, so I went to submarine school.”
Over the next eight years he would serve on two diesel and two nuclear subs. The machinists mate helped take care of all non-nuclear components on the subs, including oxygen scrubbers, generators and periscopes.
After serving two years of shore duty in Chicago, Quartuccio left the Navy after 10 years. “It quit being fun,” he explains.

POLICEMAN AND SALESMAN
The big man (6-foot-3, 237 pounds) set steel for basements for about a year in the late 1960s, then became a policeman in Elmhurst, Ill., a Chicago suburb. On the side, he says, “I started selling lots for General Development Corporation.” The
Chicago-based company was selling housing lots in Port Charlotte, Fla., sight unseen by the purchasers.  Quartuccio went to Port Charlotte to see the lots he was selling, “and of course was dazzled by Florida, as all of us are.” He got hired by the Punta Gorda Police Department (Punta Gorda is near Port Charlotte) and moved to Florida’s southwest coast.  He soon became a detective, but quit the police department after a year-and-a-half. He went to work again for General Development Corporation, this time right in Port Charlotte, where the lots were. He had a gift for “closing” sells set up by other salesmen. One line he used on hesitant husbands whose wives liked the idea of buying a lot for $30 a month was, “Do you think she’s (the wife) worth a dollar a day?”  He was soon selling real estate for a local company, then opened his own Pete Quartuccio Real Estate office in Port Charlotte in the mid-1970s. He says his company was the second largest rental management company in Charlotte County, with more than 400 homes under
management.

POLITICS, BUILDING AND PEST CONTROL
Quartuccio became the Republican Party chairman for Charlotte County in the early 1980s and ran the 1980 Charlotte County U.S. Senate campaign for Paula Hawkins, who was elected. “I got interested in the way things were run,” he explains.
He became a builder in the mid-1980s, constructing houses and commercial buildings. He quit building in 1990 and stopped selling real estate in 1993. A new career – pest control – had caught his attention.
Why pest control?
“Money,” he says.
Quartuccio worked as a pest control technician and, after the requisite three years, became a certified pest control operator. In the mid-1990s, he opened All-Service Pest Management in a commercial building he had owned for years. He started as many do, as a sole operator running a route in a small truck.
He does no advertising, not even in the Yellow Pages. He says potential customers who use the Yellow Pages “shop for the lowest price.” He built his business, which now has five technicians and two secretaries, by word of mouth. His daughter, Maurine, is his office manager.
The company’s business mix is about 30 percent termite work and 35 percent each general household pest and lawn care.
There is no signage at All-Service Pest Management. Inside the glass front door is a covered pool table, sometimes occupied by Kiki, a black and white cat. “She’s in charge of rodent training,” Quartuccio says,
grinning.
Quartuccio is the sole human occupant of the front office, sitting behind a desk on the far side of the pool table. Scores of prints of teddy bears, tigers, raccoons and other animals cover the walls. Why teddy bears? “I like ‘em,” the former karate instructor explains.
“Pete is the consummate exterminator,” says Larry McKinney, president of Lan Mac Pest Control in Ft. Myers. “He’s the salt of the earth. He focuses on exterminating, not so much on business. He’s concerned more about his service and product than about his business, and that’s unusual.”